Kingdom Come, Chapter 3
Kingdom Come, Chapter 3 My scream could have been heard all across China. It rang through the palace, into all others' ears, into the ears of people at down at the valley below. It shook the palace walls, it made peaches fall from the peach tree of heavenly wisdom, the statues even heard it and winced at the ear shattering screams. All I knew was that it was loud enough to awaken the masters of the jade palace and send them running to the source of the scream, me, to where I was- Po's room. Where, by the way, Po was gone, a note in his place… ---- It had been a peaceful night for everyone except I. I had a terrible nightmare, one so terrible that it caused me to awake, tears streaming down my face, shivering, even though it wasn't cold in my room. It started out as a good dream. Po and I were under the peach tree, talking about our differences. Po was telling me about life in the valley, and I was telling him about life in Renningville. Everything was calm, a warm breeze was going through the valley, and everything seemed perfect. It was a beautiful night. All of a sudden, a gigantic ball of fire, burning in the night, casting an eerie shadow across the grass covered ground, crept up on us. It pounced on me, and I felt heat, pain, and stinging coming across my body. My clothes were on fire, and so was my hair. I screamed as I started turning to ash. "Po!" I cried. "Help me! Help me!" Po to the rescue! He grabbed the fiery ball and pushed it off of me. The fire on my body disappeared with the wind, but Po's hands were in flames. The ball attacked him as well, and every hit that it gave him, another part of his body was in flames- his ears, face, arms, feet. I was about to help him, but I found that I couldn't move. I was frozen in time. Po begged me to help him, and I couldn't. I couldn't even speak. I was stuck, like those dreams where you're in danger, but you can't move or speak. All of a sudden, Po began turning to ash (let's not go into detail about how horrifying that looked). Chains appeared on him, and the ball of fire threw him in a cage. Po was almost all ash, I kept trying to move and/or scream. The ball of fire picked the cage up (I don't know how, it just did) and the fire ball ran away, fast as lightning. I found that I could move, but couldn't speak. I didn't see where the fire ball took Po, who was probably now completely ash, so I couldn't chase them. I walked to the spot where Po was taken from, and saw a yellow piece of paper on the ground. I picked it up. On it was, in red marker, a light sketch of a flaming heart. ---- I woke up, crying, silently calling Po's name. I found that I was laying in bed, tears streaming down my face, my hand outstretched as if I was reaching out for something. I knew what I was reaching out for- Po. I wiped my eyes and got out of bed. I slowly walked to Po's room and opened the door. There he was, snoring away in bed. No part of his body was ash. I smiled, closed the door, and walked back to my room, getting to sleep easily, knowing that Po hadn't been kidnapped and turned to ash by a ball of flaming fire… ---- I woke up the next morning to the smell of spring air and the sound of birds chirping, calling each other. I pulled the blanket off of me and got out of bed. I quickly changed into an orange tank top and a dark blue jean skirt. I put black sandals on my feet, combed my hair, brushed my teeth, and walked down the hall to the dining room. As I walked past Po's room, I noticed something- his snoring was absent. I couldn't hear it. Usually, it's loud and clear. But today, it was gone from the palace. Curious, I opened his door, and found that he wasn't there. This wasn't a surprise to me. Po was probably training or making breakfast, but he never gets up this early. Something was missing here. And the next clue I found only added to the mystery. I saw something on Po's bed, which looked like a piece of yellow paper, similar to the one I had seen in my dream. I walked up to it, picked it up, looked at it, and started screaming and crying. On it was, in red marker, a light sketch of a flaming heart. ---- Everyone ran into Po's bedroom at the sound of my screaming. "Po's gone!" I sobbed to them at the sight of their confused and worried faces. "He-he's been kidnapped by a ball of fire!" I continued to sob, and Trinity and Nicole kneeled by me and tried to get me to explain this a little better. I couldn't stop crying. Po was gone, the one I loved. Thousands of thoughts raced through my mind- what if he never comes back? What if he's dead? What if he turned to ash already, and it's too late? After what seemed like hours, I came around and didn't cry as hard. "Master Kelsi," Shifu said to me in a soft, soothing voice, kneeling by me, seeming more like a father than anything else. "Please tell us'' everything'' that you know about this." Shocker. Master Shifu never said 'please', anytime. This must be important to him. So I decided to go ahead and explain. I told him, through tears, about my dream, how I found the note here, and why I think that a ball of fire kidnapped Po. At the end of the story, Master Shifu looked in shock. "I knew she was coming back," Shifu said softly to himself. "What, Master?" I asked, wiping my eyes. "Is this about Lindsey, master?" Crane asked. Master Shifu nodded. "It's her symbol," he said to the five. "I'd know it anywhere." "Master, who's Lindsey?" Trinity asked. "Yeah," Nicole said. Shifu looked up at us. "Humans, follow me. I have a story to tell you." ---- The three of us humans followed Master Shifu into the 'scroll room', which I go into often. All along the walls are shelves and shelves full of beautiful scrolls. The girls and I have found that when we press our necklaces to the scrolls, the Chinese writing turns to English, and we can understand them. Master Shifu then opened a chest that had been sitting near a group of chairs in the room. I had always wondered what was in that chest, and I guessed that I would find out today. Shifu pulled out a violet colored scroll with a silver handle. It reminded me of the Goddess Scroll, the scroll which, when opened, transports the Dragon Sisters to the castle of Ai in the afterlife. Shifu opened the scroll and revealed what was drawn on it- a painted picture of a beautiful human girl, who looked to be in her late teenage years, and a familiar snow leopard. The human girl had thick blonde hair which only went up to her chin. Her skin was a beautiful peachy color, and her eyes were a light shade of brown. Her lips were pink, her nails were painted gold, and she wore a gold sundress. On her feet were black sandals. Next to her stood a snow leopard who was much taller than she was. He had gray fur with a few white stripes, eyes that seemed to sparkle in the sunlight, and wore a pair of white pants and brown sandals. He had her arm around her, and the too looked like they were laughing. They looked happy to be together. All of a sudden, I recognized the snow leopard. "That's Tai Lung!" I announced. Shifu nodded. "The snow leopard in this picture is in fact Tai Lung, when he was in his teenage years," he explained, looking at the picture of his adopted son. "Then who's the girl, master?" Nicole asked. "The girl," Shifu began, "is a girl who came to the Jade Palace when she was no older than five years of age. She was an incredible warrior, and it didn't take long for Tai Lung and her to fall in love. Her name was, and still is, Lindsey Chor Gom." "Chor Gom?" Trinity asked. "That's the name of Chor Gom prison, right?" Shifu nodded, still looking at the picture. "Her story is a sorrowful one, full of love and betrayal," he said, and then Master Shifu began his story: ---- "Many years ago, on a rainy summer's day, when Tai Lung was only six years old, and skilled at Kung Fu even at that age, I heard a knock at the door of the Jade Palace very late at night. I quickly answered it, sure it was another master or a messenger, but it was not one nor the other. There, in the doorway, stood a small, human girl. She had brown eyes, light skin, blonde hair, and she was incredibly small. She stood, out in the rain, shivering, looking like sadness had washed over her. "I immediately took her inside. She explained to me, over some food, that her name was Lindsey Chor Gom, and that her parents were Shau Chor Gom and Ling Chor Gom, the great Kung Fu warriors who Chor Gom prison was named after. She explained to me that there had been a great battle involving both her parents very recently. Lindsey's parents had battled a powerful bison named Lang Woa. The three warriors all lost their lives in the battle, and there hadn't been a victor nor a loser. Lindsey awoke to find her parents dead upon the floor. She ran away from her village in sorrow, in hopes to find a better life, and heard about the Jade Palace. She came here, hoping to become a Kung Fu warrior like her parents and to get revenge on the evil. "I let Lindsey sleep at the Jade Palace for the night as I thought about making the palace her home. She was the daughter of two great Kung Fu warriors, which meant that she had Kung Fu in her blood, and she could be a great warrior. She was determined, strong, and deserved a better life. So Lindsey's home became the Jade Palace. "She turned out to be a great warrior, she learned quickly, and she made friends with Tai Lung and the Furious Five in no time at all. They respected each other. But for some reason, Lindsey had something against Master Oogway. She never listened to him, and she always did what she thought, rather than what Oogway thought. She listened to me and the other young ones of the palace. But for some reason, she never liked Oogway. She never told me why, but I found out many years later. "Lindsey grew, and became one of the greatest warriors of the palace very quickly, almost as strong as Tai Lung. I believed that either one of them could have been the Dragon Warrior. But Tai Lung fought more with his heart, Lindsey fought more with her mind, which is why I thought that Tai Lung was probably the Dragon Warrior. But it could have been Lindsey as well. "During their training, I noticed that Tai Lung and Lindsey were becoming incredibly close. They stayed together all the time, and they were inseparable. When they reached the age of thirteen, the two did more than stay together all the time. I caught them holding hands, hugging, kissing under the peach tree of heavenly wisdom. The first time I caught them kissing, I felt anger coming over me. I ran over to them and yelled, disciplining them for doing such a grown up thing. Oogway then came and told me to let them have their love, for these moments they will remember forever, and that love is the one thing that repels hate and evilness. So I let them kiss, but it still angered me, seeing my adopted children falling in love like that." ---- I gasped. I couldn't believe it. Tai Lung falling in love? Well, he wasn't always evil. But I never expected him to have had a lover! ---- "One night," Shifu continued. "I decided that Lindsey had the potential to be one of the greatest warriors in history, and I decided to take her to a place where only the most skilled warriors can go- Mount Valician, the most vicious active volcano in China, where I would teach her to be a fire witch- a being who can control the element of fire. "Oogway warned me that this teaching would only be used against me in later years, but I still took Lindsey there one night. We went towards the top, where we found that it was completely hollow, and inside was bubbling lava, ready to spill. I told her to focus and tell the lava to recede. She calmly spoke, "Lava, I command you to recede,", and the lava receded a bit. That was when I realized that Lindsey was a fire witch. "We were there for a month. Her training blossomed, and soon, she was able to pick up lava with her bare hand, make fire by just nodding her head, jump into the lava without getting hurt at all, and even send a ray of lava shooting at someone with a snap of her fingers. In no time at all, she became and official fire witch. "When we came back, Lindsey was almost the strongest warrior of the palace, Tai Lung being the strongest. During that time, Tai Lung became power greedy, wanting to know if he was truly the Dragon Warrior. Also during that time, I asked Lindsey why she disliked Oogway. She replied by saying that one of Oogway's allies was the bison that got her parents killed, Lang Woa. I was shocked that Lang was one of Oogway's allies, but I never asked Oogway if it was true, for I believed Lindsey, because she was one of my best students. "One night, Tai Lung asked Oogway if he was truly the Dragon Warrior, and when Oogway replied no, Tai Lung went on his rampage through the valley. I watched from afar as he destroyed half the valley, not being able to do anything, for he was much stronger than I by now. Lindsey saw what her lover was doing, and ran down the thousand steps to the valley below to stop him. I begged and pleaded for her not to go, for she'd only lose her life. She replied by saying that if she did lose her life, she'd meet her parents in the afterlife, and soon Tai Lung." ---- I saw Master Shifu's face grow full of sadness as he described what he saw when he got up closer...